Monday, February 23, 2015

Ashton #6

Hello everyone! I have had quite the range of emotions this week, I've gotten the whole scale from good to better to best! It was a good week. And I'm excited for this coming week.

I'm going to do a day by day letter today, because I have so many thoughts in my head right now, this will be the best way to try to organize it.

Monday after P-day we went tracting. I love it, absolutely love it when you receive confirmation that the plans that you had planned the night before were in harmony with God's plans. We tracted into a man named Ali, and right away he invited us in and told us that he loves to have conversations with people about God, because he feels like he's recently started his journey to get to know God. Hey guess what! We can help you! He denied our help and doesn't want us to teach him the lessons, but he invited us back to have another chat about God later on. So we had a flashing yellow light. Proceed with caution.

Tuesday was the last district meeting of the transfer.

after that we did more tracting and then had our dinner appointment with the ward mission leader and his family, who are brilliant. I love them. They are one of the best families in England.

Wednesday we were able to help out chopping wood again, in the days that followed, my back was soo sore.

Saturday. :) On Saturday I went on exchange with my district leader Elder Lxx. While with him I learned so much! We had a long time to just talk and get to know each other, and during the conversation he helped me to realize that I was doing something wrong. It isn't something that was super obvious, and I could've still been a successful missionary without changing it, but once I realized that something was wrong, I just had to change it. I realized that I had a face on. I wasn't being myself. I had to be so many things, charitable, kind, obedient, Christ-like, diligent, It was overwhelming. I realized that somewhere in the last 7 months, I had stopped becoming, and was just doing. It was just to stressful for me to try to Be everything, that I had subconsciously forgot about that and just Did it. I don't know if that made any sense to you, but it does to me. I realized that it was more important to be an imperfect person who is trying, than to be someone who acts perfect, but isn't really. I was squeezing myself into the mold of a what I thought a perfect missionary was instead of just becoming a missionary. Once I took that face off, which I'm not done doing, it's a process, people on the street started opening up more! it was amazing!

Saturday we also had our follow up visit with Axx. And Lo and behold he has a wife! They are both striving to draw closer to God, and with Elder Lxx there I was able to understand how we can teach without them knowing that they were being taught. So we have another appointment with them!

We also taught Mxxx and Axxx about Faith. Mxxx really opened up and they finally committed to pray and ask if the Book of Mormon is true! Progress! Mxxx wasn't able to come to church, which was a bummer, because he is struggling more than Axxx, but Axxx made it to the whole thing! So that's my week in a nutshell. I wasn't able to say everything that's on my mind because my companion is waiting for me so I have to hurry. But transfers are this week and I'm staying here and I'll be getting a new companion.